Commenting mainly on France and U.S.policy in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Author of "Web of Deceit, the History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush." Now finishing a novel, "The Watchman's File," delving into Israel's most closely-guarded secret. [It's not the bomb.]

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Saturday, March 24, 2012

Even before Mohammed Merah-a 23 year old French punk and
part time garage mechanic turned jihadi—died in a hail of bullets in
Toulouse, the horrific affair had already become the focus of France’s current heated
presidential campaign.

No one benefited more from the crisis than President
Nicholas Sarkozy, for whom law and order has always been a calling card. But after
acting admirably presidential during the most ghastly moments of the crisis,
calling for national unity and a temporary halt to electioneering, once Merah
had been disposed of, Sarkozy abruptly reverted to the erratic manner that has
also been his hallmark over the years.

He announced his intention to present legislation to the
French parliament making it a crime for people to travel abroad for terrorist
indoctrination or consult jihadist Web sites.

As I argue in another
blog, the president’s proposals are precipitous, and, above all, a dangerous
threat to French civil liberties. Punishing people who –for whatever
reason—choose to read the contents of certain proscribed Internet sites, would,
in effect, oblige France to create a new category of law enforcers—very much
akin to the “Thought Police” so terrifyingly
portrayed by George Orwell in 1984.

France already has enough laws on the books to deal with the
terrorist threat without crippling its democratic traditions.

Another tack taken by Sarkozy, this time to hobble his
opponents on the left, is to wrap himself in the national flag and maintain -as
Sarkozy immediately did--that it is despicable for anyone to blame French
society for the outrageous actions of Mohammed Merah and the obscene rampage in
Toulouse.

Sarkozy’s challenge is a blatant attempt to sweep France’s
enormous social problems—particularly the integration of the country’s 5-6
million immigrants of Islamic origin--under the carpet, at least during the
election campaign. It was also a
bet that, with the French, outraged by the events of the past few days, would turn against any attempts by
Sarkozy’s opponents to take up the issue of integration at this time.

Indeed Sarkozy’s theme was immediately amplified by four
deputies from his UMP who called
for revision of the French Code of Nationality. They’re after regulations that would
make it easier to dispatch the hordes of delinquents and trouble-makers in the
banlieues, like Mohammed Merah, (“scum” Sarkozy once famously called them) back
to the lands of their forefathers.

After all, the UMP deputies argue, the only thing about
Merah “ that was French were his identity papers”.

The statement is absurd. As the leftist “Liberation”
editorialized this morning,

“Merah is certainly a monster, but a French monster and
monsters also reveal the fabric of a country. For how many generations can a
child born French be sent back to his Algerian origins, and for how many
generations will the origin of his ancestors make him a foreigner in the
country that is his?”

For further background, readers might be interested in other
recent blogs I’ve written over the
past few days on Mohammed Merah and the slaughter in Toulouse.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Mohammed Merah, a teenage loser, a petty thief and
unemployed garage mechanic, who achieved instant worldwide notoriety as the
latest symbol of Islamic jihad went down in a hail of bullets early this
morning.

He leaves a string of unanswered questions and paradoxes in
his wake.

Such as, to what degree was this beardless, hash-smoking, lacoste-wearing young tough actually linked to al-Qaeda, as he claimed to police
and reporters? To what degree was
he really a self-declared jihadist, acting almost entirely on his own? An individual target, rather than part
of an organized cell, a target much more difficult for police in France and
throughout Europe to deal with.

--Another paradox, mentioned in
my previous blog, but well worth repeating, because it leads to a further question:

France has chosen to spend hundreds of millions of dollars
sending troops to Afghanistan to support Nato and the U.S. The presumed theory being to prevent
that country from remaining a breeding-ground for terrorists to attack France
and Europe and the U.S.

But it’s almost certain that Merah, like hundreds of young
would-be jihadists throughout Europe of Muslim descent, was drawn to
Afghanistan, exactly because French troops had joined in the invasion of that
Islamic country.

Which brings up another irony (and question for Mohammed
Merah.)

Why, if he was such a rabid jihadist, did Mohammed Merah
attempt in 2010 to enlist in the French military, specifically the Foreign
Legion? For some reason—either because he was rejected straight off, or got
cold feet—he never wound up in uniform.

If he had, the young man who became an overnight symbol for
the Clash of Civilizations, might with—just a slight twist of fate--have joined
French troops in Afghanistan battling Islamic militants.

Another question: what impact will this bloody national
trauma have on the presidential elections, the first round due next month. Difficult
to say at this point, but many commentators think that—despite attacks from the
far right that he has not been tough enough on radical Islamists—the speedy
resolution of the affair will only bolster an embattled President Nicholas
Sarkozy.

[The French and American authorities will presumably also have to explain the fact that Mohammed Merah was reportedly also on the U.S. "no-fly" list.]

Ironically, it was a similar tense
standoff in 1993 that first brought
Sarkozy to the national spot light:

He was then the mayor of Neuilly, a tranquil community just
outside Paris. when a gunman wearing a dynamite belt burst into a local school
and demanded ransome to reslease eight hostages.

With incredible aplomb, Sarkoy talked the gunman into releasing
one child and—with the TV camers rolling—walked out of the classroom with the
youngster in his arms.

After 46 hours of talks, the gunman was finally killed by
police sharpshoorters. The seven remaining hostages were freed unharmed.
Sarkozy was launched.

The similar bloody denouement of Toulouse notwithstanding, whoever
becomes France’s next President will continue to face enormous problems—and threats.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

The horrific chain of 7 murders in Toulouse, France that
have stunned this country, could have been lifted directly from a television
thriller. In fact, this whole terrible affair has been a nightmare scenario
that, for decades, has haunted authorities in France, Europe—and the United
States.

And the nightmare is far from over.

Mohammed Merah, a 24 year-old French man of Algerian origin,
a few years ago gets involved with a Salafist network in France. According to the
little that is known so far, Merah then heads off to Afghanistan where he links
up with al Qaeda. In 2007, he is arrested for planting bombs and jailed for
three years by the Afghans, but he
escapes in a Taliban-led breakout. He is later picked up by Pakistan
authorities in 2010 and released.

Mohammed returns to Toulouse where his family lives and bides
his time. Then last week with the most deadly aplomb, he kills three French
soldiers and four days later rides his stolen motorcycle to the entrance of a
Jewish school near his home and methodically shoots down a rabbi and three
Jewish students.

And, in the age of You Tube and the Internet, to ensure that
his gruesome act will some day be witnessed by all, around his neck he wears a
video camera.

Islamic leaders in France have made clear how horrified they
are that anyone—including Merah himself –would attempt to link his vicious acts
with Islam. French President Sarkozy is calling for national solidarity. The
leader of the Jewish community in Toulouse has declared himself “immensely
relieved” by the news that the killer has been caught.

But the crisis highlighted by Merah is far from over.

The problem, of course is that Mohammed Merah is just one of
between five to six million French, most of Muslim descent living in France. A
large number reside in shabby, banlieues of
the country’s major cities, where housing is dilapidated, unemployment high,
and bitterness rampant.

Meanwhile, the current political storm--about public street
prayer, permitting new mosques, banning burkas, and controlling hallal butchers--that
has roiled this country has ensured that many Muslims feel even more
marginalized.

There is also a considerable burden of history. Incredibly,
last night—around the same time as police were planning how to apprehend Mohammed
Merah in Toulouse—my wife and I were watching a gripping movie on French TV depicting
the courageous attempts of a young Algerian girl brutally tortured by French
troops in Algeria as her country fought a bloody struggle for independence. (Was
Merah watching the same flick? )

But what counts far more than colonial history to young
French Muslims, is the fact that France chose to join Nato and the United
States in invading Afghanistan. Thus, Mohammed Merah’s calculated targeting
last week of four French soldiers. Ironically, three of them were also of North
African origin, but, in his Salafist eyes, that probably made their “treachery”
even more condemnable.

The ghastly, methodical slaughter of the rabbi and three Jewish
school children four days later were—Mohammed Merah has already told the French
police —revenge for the young Palestinian children killed by the Israeli army
in Gaza.

(Did he realize that, in fact, the four people he murdered at
the Jewish school were all Israelis?)

The bottom line is that there is no way that, knowing these
facts, anyone can credibly write off these events as another despicable case of
anti-Semitism: the same kind of deeply embedded racial hatred that has come
down through the ages; the virulence that fueled the Holocaust and the dispatch
with which French police rounded up Jews for the Nazis during World War II.

Mohammed Merah’s anti-Semitism was probably not driven as
much by ancient loathing —but more by the actions of Israel over the past few
decades--the expulsion of the Palestinians, the rampant expansion of West Bank
settlements, the invasions of Lebanon, the massive attacks on Gaza, take your
pick.

To prove the point, the various upsurges of anti-Semitic
attacks in France have corresponded precisely with each upsurge in the bloody
conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians.

Whether Israel’s defenders feel the country’s actions are
justified or not is almost bedside the point: those actions are regarded as
outrageous in the eyes of millions of European Muslims, who watch the graphic coverage
on TV and the Internet of all these grisly events—including the regular statements
of Jewish leaders in France and elsewhere that they fully support Israel’s
actions.

As outspoken Israeli commentator, Uri Avnery, one
of the most acerbic critics of his country’s policies, has pointed the
irony that Israel, created as a haven from anti-Semitism for Jews around the
world, has instead, by its actions, become the greatest promoter of
anti-Semitism around the world.

So, what to do?

Beef up anti-terrorism efforts even further? It turns out that
Mohammed Merah was already on a “watch list” in the Toulouse region of some 600
people, from Islamic radicals to right-wing bigots. Which is how the police,
through some keen detective work, finally managed to run him down. He was on
that list because Pakistani police had notified French authorities after spotting
the young man in 2010.

We can be assured that anti-Terrorist units in France and
across Europe have infiltrated Salafist groups and have their own watch-lists. So why not take action?

Because if there were indeed 600 names in Toulouse, then across
France and Europe, we’re talking thousands—perhaps tens of thousands --of such people.
There is no way to keep them all under round-the-clock surveillance.

Then expel them all. French citizens?

Arrest them.

On what grounds? On whose evidence?

Of course, anything is possible as we’ve seen in the U.S. since
9/11, and we can be sure in the current super-heated political climate in
France, we’ll hear the most extreme demands.

You can also be sure that that any massive crackdown will
only further increase the alienation of young Muslims.

And, in the end, there will almost certainly be plenty of bloody-minded
young men and women who will slip through the net.

How about dealing with the root problem? Launch massive
programs to really integrate deprived Muslim communities in France and
throughout Europe: housing, schools, jobs, etc. In fact, President Sarkozy has
been making an important effort to provide better housing, but a few years of
effort can not overcome decades of
prejudice and neglect.

In my view, a much more immediate way of at least alleviating
the issue would be for France to pull out of Afghanistan. The adventure has
cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars, and some
eighty-four dead soldiers, including four recently murdered by an Afghan
soldier they were supposedly training. The Afghan campaign has been a disaster
for all concerned. The U.S. is
headed for the doors, seeking only a seemly way to exit. The French could show the way.

You can be sure, however, that there will be many who will
cite the Toulouse killings to argue just the opposite: that the fact that Mohammed
Merah may have received some terrorist training in Afghanistan is proof of the
threat that jihadis operating there still pose to Europe. Thus, the imperative need
to persevere until the Taliban and their allies and defeated, the threat
totally liquidated.

But the problem is that, as the past decade has brutally
demonstrated, despite a huge
investment in treasure and blood by the U.S. and its allies, such a military
victory is not in the cards. The only way out is some kind of deal with the
Taliban and their allies—a deal whereby they take a share of power, with the
understanding that any attempt to turn their country again into a training
ground for terrorists targeting Europe or the U.S. will be dealt with by drones
and special forces, not massive troops interventions.

Indeed, there is a strong argument that the American and
Nato presence in the Muslim world have done more to ignite the outrage of young
Muslims elsewhere than any ragtag training camps. Why would Mohammed Merah have
gone to Afghanistan if it were not for the presence of French troops in that Muslim
country?

Which brings us to Israel and Iran.

Some militant Israelis—and their backers in the U.S.—will use
the Toulouse attacks to bolster the case for bombing Iran. The argument: just
imagine if that Al Qaeda killer in Toulouse and others like him throughout
Europe and the U.S., just imagine if they had access not just to a 45 pistol and
a Kalashnikov, but to a nuclear weapon, furnished by Iran.

One would hope however, that the Toulouse attack would give
Israeli hawks pause. In assessing the risks of bombing Iran, Israeli
intelligence analysts have been speculating about the kind of retaliation their
country might face.

It’s clear now that not just Israeli citizens would be at
risk.

In fact, compared with the 191 people killed
and 1,800 wounded when al-Qaeda inspired terrorists bombed the railway in
Madrid in 2004, and the 52
people killed and 700 injured in coordinated suicide attacks on the London
Underground in July 2005, France so far has had it easy.

Imagine the incredible mayhem if, one day, terrorists like
Mohammed Merah decided to target The Chunnel linking Paris and London?

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The cold-blooded killing of a rabbi and three students at a
Jewish school in Toulouse, France yesterday have left the French shocked—and
dismayed. What was driving the killer? No one knows. What is clear is that he
went about his grisly work with the cold-blooded aplomb of an executioner, or
someone who had once been professional military.

Apparently, he also carried a video camera around his neck.
Will we shortly see his victims terrified faces posted on You Tube, in the
pages of Paris Match--or on one of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
of sites that regularly spew racial venom across the Internet. More on that to
come.

But first, what brand of venom?

Many commentators have already decided the killer was driven
by the same brand of rabid anti-Semitism that fueled the Holocaust. One Italian
journalist, a regular columnist for an Israeli newspaper, citing the rising
number of anti-Semitic incidents in France and much of Europe, spoke
apocalyptically of a new Shoah, warning all Jews to flee not just France but
all of Europe for safety in Israel before it is too late.

The problem with the theory that the killer was solely
driven by anti-Semitism is that, in two other previous attacks last week,
apparently the same assassin shot to death three French paratroopers and
seriously wounded another. The soldiers were all Arab or black, and appeared to
have been targeted specifically, witnesses said.

In other words, judging by his victims--Jews, Arabs,
blacks--peoples of other racial origin, who the French right have traditionally
regarded as not being truly French, no matter how many generations their families
may have lived in this country. It is this sentiment that drove the French
police to do much of the dirty work for the Nazi’s deportation of Jews in
France during World War II.

It is this spirit, unfortunately, that also underlies the
mounting resentment in France and across Europe of the continent’s growing
Islamic population. That resentment is further fueled of course by the fear
that, as their inroads on traditional culture increase, they will actually take
over Europe.

Indeed, over the past years, violent attacks on Muslim
targets in France—assaults,
insults, destruction of mosques and cemeteries, have also seen an
alarming increase-up 31% just last year. “France for the French” and “Arabs
Out” were slogans recently sprayed across gravestones of Muslim soldiers who
had fought for France in World War I.

Such racist sentiments are widespread among all classes in
France, as messages approvingly forwarded to myself and my wife by educated,
middle-class friends and acquaintances make clear.

Unfortunately, Nicholas Sarkozy himself has played a
shameful role in fueling French xenophobia: the view of us and them.

This despite the fact that, he immediately rushed to the site
of the slaughter in Toulouse, and spoke movingly of how the slain children were
“our children, they are not just your children.”

There is no reason to think Sarkozy ( son of a Hungarian
father and Greek half- Jewish mother ) is not sincere. But since taking office, and
increasingly over the past few months, as elections approach, the President has
been pandering to the right and virulent anti-immigrant feelings.

He has threatened to suspend France’s participation in
Europe’s 25-country open border agreement, unless other states do more to block
illegal immigrants and refugees from entering Europe. He has also, however,
attacked legal immigration.

That’s for starters. Rather than concentrating on basic
issues like providing more jobs for the French, Sarkozy has lately taken on the
thorny question of the way French meat is slaughtered.

As the New York Times editorialized
just a couple of days before the Toulouse massacre, “In a particularly vile gambit from a man who already brags about
banning the burqa in public, Mr. Sarkozy now pledges to protect consumers
from unknowingly eating halal meat. He called for legislation requiring meat
labels to note the slaughtering methods used. This proposal originally came
from Marine Le Pen, presidential candidate of the xenophobic National Front.
Mr. Sarkozy first called it frivolous. Then adopted it.

“Five million to six million Muslims now live in France, almost a tenth of the total
population. It is cruel to keep family members from joining them and cruel and
destructive to subject their religion to mockery. Ms. Le Pen is currently
running third in the polls. Regrettably, Mr. Sarkozy has no problem being
frivolous or cruel if it means he can peel away some of her voters.

Meanwhile, in Israel while the country’s leaders clarion the
evils of anti-Semitism, many of their own right-wing supporters are the most
rabid of Islamophobes.

Dov Lior, one of the most important rabbis in the West Bank,
extolled Baruch Goldstein—who, in 1994, machine-gunned twenty-nine Palestinians
at the Cave of Patriarchis in Hebron—as “holier than all the martyrs of the
Holocaust.”

Lior also endorsed a book that discussed when it is right
and proper to murder an Arab, and he and a group of kindred rabbis issued a
proclamation proscribing Jews from selling or renting lands to non-Jews.

Figures such as Lior are not speaking from the wilderness.
They are central to Benjamin
Netanyahu’s continued hold on government.

I’ll bet that, if it hasn’t already happened, that a
right-wing Israeli official or editorialist will cite the vicious Toulouse
attack as further justification for Israel to bomb Iran. The argument: imagine
what would happened if, instead of being armed with a 45 pistol, the
anti-Semite had access to a nuclear weapon. We will not wait again for the
world to act!

But before Americans start feeling too smug about all this,
just this past
January, a prominent New
York Shi’ite mosque with a branch in Pakistan and three homes were
firebombed. No one was injured.

Another firebomb exploded
inside the Al-lman School in the Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Jamaica,
Queens. Approximately 80 people were inside the mosque center when two or three
Molotov cocktails, at least one made from a Starbucks bottle, were thrown at the
building.

Those attacks came less than
a week after the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) said, “We are
witnessing an unprecedented increase in rhetorical and
physical attacks on the American Muslim community and Islam.”

It said that mosques have
been targeted in arson and attacks and by vandals in more than a dozen states,
stretching from California to New York, including the Midwest and southern states.

If you have the stomach for it, plunge into the virulent
currents of racial hatred that thrive in the Internet. For anti-Semitism, start
with the Holocaust Deniers at http://www.ihr.org.
For rabid Islamophobes, some of whom, like Pam Geller, are still regular
features on U.S. talk shows, check out http://www.jihadwatch.org/.

Or, you might just examine more closely the kinds of “jokes”
and emails you half-jokingly exchange with your own more articulate friends.

@barrylando

About Me

Originally from Vancouver, studied at Harvard, Harvard Law and Columbia University, then correspondent for Time Life in South America, and 30 years as Producer with 60 Minutes in Washington D.C. and Paris, where I now live. Wrote book on history of Western Invervention in Iraq, Web of Deceit, now writing a novel, painting, travelling, visiting friends and relatives.